"Review: The Ark, Season 1" Topic

The premise: A sleeper ship en route to colonize a nearby star is struck by disaster, the crew is awakened in mid-voyage to discover crisis after crisis.

I lost interest halfway through the pilot, which seemed more like soap opera to the stars, and I thought the lead actress was weak. However, I came back much later, watched the rest of the pilot, and started to like this show. So then I watched the entire first season.

Hard sci-fi this is not. You may scream at the screen occasionally. However, the characters become enjoyable, there are lots of twists and turns, and it's fun.

Star Trek: TNG had Wesley (ugh!), and The Ark has TWO young-adult geniuses (Alicia and Angus). Fortunately, they are much more entertaining, and don't dominate the plots.

I've watched the entire first season now, and looking forward to next season. It's no Firefly, but it's more consistent.

They apparently saved money by filming this series in Serbia, of all places, which gave them access to a lot of local actors with interesting accents and performances. No 'big name' actors at all.

I enjoyed it – the lack of hard sci-fi is explained by the (fairly obvious) plot twist. It was at least internally consistent.

I wish they could move away from the "kid genius" and "cyber-geek" and "macho daredevil" archetypes, etc.

That was something I liked about the Expanse. Somehow the unbelievability of the situations was not so in your face.

I gave up shortly into the 1st episode. It seemed like it had been written by people who had never really seen any SF, but saw it as a "things those kids like. You know, high school, in space."